A tribute to blind photographers.

Posted by Shuva Brata Deb (Bangalore, India) on 12 February 2007 in People & Portrait.

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Last Saturday morning while reading the paper over my breakfast, there was this article on photographers who are totally blind. It talked about an exhibition featuring 9 blind photographers featured at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

This lead me to think and I was wondering how life would be if I was blind. I had different "incomplete-answers" for the case if I was blind from birth and if I turned blind now. I then did a little search on the net and this is what I found.

They use their ears to guide them, by listening carefully they find out how far the subject is away from them and in which direction. For example to take a picture of a person they shoot when they hear laughter. There is a huge difference if the photographer was born blind or not. Its the difference between heaven and earth. When we take pictures we know the direction of the light, but they dont. The view finder is useless for them. The next important thing, they can never judge for themselves how the picture came. They cant see their own work. But there exists lot of work done in this direction to help them shoot and review their own work. A google serach would reveal very amazing and unbelievable methdologies that applies here.

The newspaper article also said that blind-photographers have discovered that holding the camera touching the forehead, like a third eye, was the most convenient way to stabilize it.

Its truely amazing to learn about them and see some of their pictures. I dedicate this picture of mine to all the blind photographers who are using senses and stimuli that people like you and me cant even think to imagine.

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